Blog by Lucy Courtenay

Would Suit Retro Goat

Lilliput. The famous land of pygmies in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726). The name is apparently based on Danish lille, ‘little’ and Italian putto, ‘child’, although English ‘little’ and Latin putus, ‘boy’, would work almost as well. It is possible that Swift intended a pun on ‘put’, so that the land is one where little people have been put.

Our Lilliputian spare room is finished. Three walls are white, with the remaining feature wall a luminous yellow which gave me a headache when I was painting it (though that could have been the fumes). We also have a new blind thrumming with an epic seventies vibe. I had a bedspread just the same in Yellow Dormitory, circa 1983.

The room is small. Extremely small. To give you a true indication of the size we’re discussing here, the yellow wall took one and a half sample pots of Lemon Chiffon 1 to paint, and it’s the biggest wall in the room. We’ll never fit a bed in it, and we can’t squeeze a decent armchair through the door frame. My father-in-law bangs his head going in and out. I think perhaps I shall advertise it in the local paper thus:

Stable newly available. Would suit small goat or similar. Blind not edible despite impressions to the contrary. Horns a no-no on account of freshly painted walls. Must be prepared to tackle stairs.